The first stop was Cattle Creek School where my father went to school from 1944 -50. This is my father recreating a school photo from 60 years ago - he was told off by his mother for having his eyes shut and his hat on crooked.
This is the cattle creek community hall built by the farming families in the area, including my grandparents.
We also visited the bridge that my great-grandfather crashed their car into in 1945. This accident broke the leg of my great-uncle Ted, and preventing him from serving in WW2. This is the ruin of the house where they called for help after the accident. Its a cute house so its a shame no-one has looked after it.
We saw some new vinyards in the lower Hakataramea valley, and also visited a large new vineyard in the Waitaki valley. When I was living in NZ no-one had any idea that this region might be suitable for wine-making but there are now hopes that it will be ideal for Pinot Noir.
We also visited some Maori rock drawings, but they are badly weathered and there is not much to see. The oak tree in the photo below is one of a series planted every mile from the town Kurow to the coast, each one with across commemorating a local lad killed in the first world war. The trees are planted nearest the home of the soldier and trees commemorating brothers are planted next to each other. Roads to other towns have similar trees, and it all adds up to a sobering reminder of the sacrifice that New Zealand made in that war. From a population of just under 1 million, NZ sent more than 100,000 troops overseas, of whom 16,000 were killed and 41,000 wounded.
We then drove down the Hakataramea Valley and Wataki valleys to the the coast and main highway #1. Along the way, just north of Oamaru, we crossed the line of latitude 45 degrees south - i.e. half-way between the equator and the south pole. The equivalent latitude in Europe is Bordeaux (or Venice), while the equivalent latitude in Japan is at the top of Hokkaido (which reminds us that Japan's latitude is similar to Italy not England).
Until about 600 years ago this area was open forest-land teeming with moa. Not far from here is an archaeological site with rows of old ovens where the Maori cooked the moa meat to preserve it for winter, and piles of thigh bones of about 90,000 moa.
We had lunch at Oamaru which is a very attractive small town on the pacific coast with many attractive stone buildings. They now also have 2 penguin colonies which we didn't have time to visit.
Oamaru was lucky in its buildings because there is lots of good-quality limestone available nearby for building, and because it was very prosperous in the 1870s from growing 'wheat', and that was a time when people still knew how to build beautiful buildings. After that time the center of the town moved north so the area of historic buildings wasn't spoiled by modern architecture.
The photo below shows the Oamaru town hall in the background and a working steam railway in the foreground. We didn't take a ride on this one.
Our family connection with Oamaru goes back to about 1875 when my paternal grandmother's maternal grandfather, Alexander Hannah, came out from Scotland with his siblings Hugh, John, James and Jane and his maternal grand-parents Hugh and Mary McClymont who were 70 at the time. His daughter, Janet, was born in Oamaru in 1879, married Walter Hog in 1901 and moved to live at Hakataramea Downs. Alexander lived in Oamaru and worked as a tailor.
This is historic buildings in Tyne St where Alxander lived for a time. When I left NZ, I don't think these old buildings were really valued by most people, so it was good to see the community now cares about them and has done such a good job of revitalizing the historic precinct.
On the afternoon we visited the Oamarau residents were having a 'heritage tea', dressing up in old-fashioned costumes, of the sort Alexander Hannah would have made.
We also made a quick visit to the Oamaru museum to do some research . The museum was well-organized and we were able to find some new details of the Hannahs and McClymonts. We identified where Hugh and Mary McClymont were buried, and also found a newspaper report of a Hugh Hannah being murdered in 1875 at a sheep station at Lake Ohau, but we need to confirm if this was indeed Alexander's brother.
After Oamaru we drove down south to Dundedin. along the way we visited the cemetery at Herbert / Otepopo. We'd never been there before but it was worth a visit, if only because this cemetery has by far the best outlook of any I have ever seen. It is on top of a hill, facing north and east across the Pacific Ocean and also west across the north Otago country-side.
Mary McClymont (my grandmothers, grandfathers, grandmother) was buried here in 1880, aged 76 when she died. There is no headstone for her, which shows that the family was poor (in fact, Alexander went bankrupt in 1887). But she certainly has a "tomb with a view".
This video panorama shows the view panning east-north-west. The smoke is a forest fire which helicopters were trying to put it out using monsoon buckets.
The last stopping point before Dunedin was the coast just north of Shag Point. By this time Hannah was sick of driving and Rika was too tired to get out of the car. But this is one of my favorite places on the road between Dunedin and Hakataramea because of this terrific view of the wild Pacific Ocean
I don't know the details of the events that gave Shag Point its name, but archaeological evidence shows that Maori were living here in the 1300s and cooking up large quantities of moas.
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